Blizzard Hints At New StarCraft, Launches Burning Crusade

Game Developer Blizzard Entertainment's long-anticipated expansion to World of Warcraft has gone live. Initial impressions are ... not available, since all 8 million players are currently in the Outlands. I'll take that to mean the servers for the most part have not melted yet. At a Burning Crusade launch party, a Blizzard exec revealed we may see a new StarCraft game very soon. But today is all about WoW. If you're not playing, and want to live vicariously, check out WarCry's extensive preview of the expansion. You could read designer Jeff Kaplan's comments on new features at FiringSquad, or Shane Dibiri's talk of inspiration at Next Generation. One new expansion a year, eh? Some folks are already looking to the future, where we probably won't see WoW on consoles, but may see it with security dongles. 0.1% of the Earth's population can't all be wrong.

Sweet, sweet freedom!

[airhed13]

You have no idea how glad I am that I finally don't care about this story. I uninstalled the game last weekend, and I've moved the CDs to my "never gonna play that game again" spindle in the back of my closet.

That's one addiction that I'll never regret kicking.

Re:Starcraft? Dongles?

[EvilRyry]

You'd think they'd make the game free since theres no single player action. Even if they lose $50 because they let you download it, they'll make up for it with your lifetime addiction.

Re:Starcraft? Dongles?

[Microlith]

Congratulations, you missed the point.

The idea isn't to prevent piracy, but to provide some means of more secure authentication because people are getting their accounts "hacked" where "hacked" means they had an easily guessed username and password, or their machine is riddled with trojans and someone captured their password.

I guess they don't want a "challenge"

[Shivetya]

sorry but a PvP environment in any MMORPG doesn't hold a candle to the standard FPS environment. Any game where your skill can be overriden by someones accumulation of stuff by simply being in game longer isn't good PvP.

I could never understand the fascination with PvP in MMORPGs, let alone "white servers" where people go PvP on a whim, till I realized they don't want a challenge, they want to win. "Real challenge" - sheesh, if they wanted one they wouldn't be doing PvP in a MMORPG!

As far as Eve goes, yeah its great if you been in there forever, but new players aren't going to be much more than cannon fodder.

Obviously more people prefer WOW than Eve, so where's the desire for a "real challenge"?

Best line from the review:

[guysmilee]

"All in all, this is more of the same ... "

I have to tell you all that I absolutely hate this game. It is annoying and tedious ... and no I don't wanna join your bloody guild!

Re:.1% of earth?

[richdun]

No, he had it right - 8,000,000/6,000,000,000 = 0.0013333... or about 0.1%

Re:Blizzard owns you

[MaximvsG]

The second I get home from work, I'll be working on Leveling to 60. Just thinking of all the XP I could have had at 60 running instances, at least now we'll get XP for them.. My rest bar better be blue all the way to 61.

Re:Gender observation.

[Xugumad]

It's just a thought, but maybe a lot of the female players didn't care enough to queue for it, or pre-ordered online (which is what I did, got it when I woke up this morning, means I missed the first 8 hours of the expansion being live, like, the pain, how will I cope)...

Re:I guess they don't want a "challenge"

[lordsilence]

Uhm... New players can compete with old players by specialization. What's great about eve is that you dont need to "accumulate" lots of stuff to compete. The more items and more expensive stuff you bring, only means that you'll lose more when you get shot down. It's all about risk vs reward in EVE. WoW has more users cause they have bigger marketing teams, spell Diablo, Warcraft etc.. It's also the game where all is really about leveling, more leveling, then accumulating the best gear which you never risk losing. It's not a game of minds like EVE is, it's a game of who can spend the most time online to grind in dungeons. As my first post said... Want a challange? Try Eve online. It's not an easy game, but it's well worth it if you get into it.

Re:Got out, and thank heaven

[Atheose]

Warcraft II was delayed, Warcraft III was delayed 4 years (original release date was Q4 1999, was pushed back to September 2003 to change the game engine to 3D), Diablo II and its eventual expansion were both also delayed, as well as the Brood War expansion for Starcraft.

None of those had monthly fees; Blizzard has a history of delaying games in order to ensure that their customers get the best product available. Don't be so quick to assume the delay of Burning Crusade is just a conspiracy to milk more money out of subscribers.

Re:Starcraft? Dongles?

[Xugumad]

> Sit back, release an expansion once per year, and enjoy the torrent of cash.

For the next 3-4 years, sure. WoW is probably enjoying its popularity peak around now. You remember Everquest, and how it looked like nothing would ever topple it, and how much money Sony was making off each expansion? Look at the mess Sony's in now; Everquest 2 did fairly poorly (compared to the original), Planetside was a near-disaster in MMO terms and SWG keeps getting redesigned in an attempt to appeal to people more.

MMOs don't last forever. They're going to need a sequel, and given the development lead time, had better be well into the design/possibly into actually implementing that sequel.

Re:Yup, my wife too...

[fitten]

Every time it's brought up, just start asking them how the grind is going. WoW, a great single player game with about 350 hours of play in it (only takes 13 days played to get to level 60... I did it several times) but after that, it's nothing but grind.

Ask them how many crypt thing legs they've gotten on the way to the 1200 (gotten ~20 per trip into an instance) to get the 30 tokens needed to buy the stuff from the faction person *AFTER* you've killed the 1000s of mobs to get the faction to actually buy it.

Or, how Blizzard nerfs the amount of honor you get from PvP because people are "earning it too fast".

Or, ask them how many times they've done Molten core (Onyxia/BWL/ZG/etc) in the past month and how was it different every time.

Pretty soon, they'll shut up and/or stop coming over.

Re:A new Starcraft? Great, I guess...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you understimate the software quality, the hardware requirements and the support needed to get 8 million players correctly and smoothly playing a game like WOW.

I'm an active developer and I just can't help amazing at how well WOW works and the amount of work that must be involved from development to support.

Masters of Orion 2

[DarthVain]

Starcraft? I can't stop playing Masters of Orion 2! God I need sleep.

Re:Outlands fun? Think again.

[LordSnooty]

Oooh, I wish I knew what all that meant.

Re:I guess they don't want a "challenge"

[mmalove]

I can say I gave EVE a try, and still play WOW. To me the whole risk vs reward thing was, well, a bit too harsh. When you have 3 kids that could at any point demand you leave the computer, or the random internet glitch/ power outage/ real life happens, and the result is you lose month of gameplay in the form of ship loss, implant loss, or straight up sp loss if your clone's out of date - that's just not the game that fits my lifestyle. Those massive 0.0 fortresses require constant vigil to defend, meaning your "guild" has to span different time zones, and not making it for a "raid" could mean months of set back too.

Don't get me wrong - I love the concept of EVE - I'd play it in a heartbeat if I was single with no kids and few responsibilities, but that kind of risk requires complete dedication to the game while you play. I've just grown to a point where I desire a game I can step into, play on my schedule, and step out of - and if I'm disconnected from VR unexpectedly it doesn't cost me everything I invested over the last month.

2008 if they rushed every aspect

[Paralizer]

FTA:

"As a Starcraft player I can tell you that I hope it wouldn't go a decade - we launched Starcraft in '98 - I hope it wouldn't go a decade before we stand here and celebrate the next Starcraft together," Itzik Ben Bassat told crowds gathered at World of Warcraft expansion The Burning Crusade's official launch event in London last night.

Unless they've already done significant work on it, how are they even considering the possibility of shipping it by 2008? I think a development cycle for a blockbuster game takes years, 3 maybe 4, and this guy is talking 1-2?

Re:diablo 3 !

[polar red]

offtopic ? maybe, maybe not. working on starcraft means less chance they will announce diablo3 any time soon, seeing that blizzard keeps only 1 game in the center of attention.

Re:A new Starcraft? Great, I guess...

[The Raven]

Gee... Blizzard, a big company, makes extremely good, genre defining games. But for some bizarre reason, they choose to only work on one game at a time, focusing on that one game to make it really good.

Crazy.

You know, and this is just a wild stab in the dark... maybe the quality of their games is because they only... no... no, that's crazy talk. I mean, EA develops tons of games at once, and their quality is...

Hmm.

Re:A new Starcraft? Great, I guess...

[moochfish]

Your description makes me think of EA. I don't know how others view EA, but I think that company tends to make games with great potential, but then they round off the details at the end, cut a few corners, and ship it to save costs and time. My point is, when your company is focusing its energy in many directions, your visions can get dilluted, and your desire grows to ship now rather than later in an attempt to get paid now.

Sort of like: why strive for one 10/10, when you can ship two 9/10's?